


old-fashioned goodbye

by sade12



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, I'm posting this late so I won't remember doing it in the morning., Knifeplay, M/M, Utivich Does Nothing But That's Why We Love Him, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 23:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17928038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sade12/pseuds/sade12
Summary: Something based on the last scene.(This wasn't supposed to be this long, look at that wordcount, what happened here?)[Slight edit 3/5/19, added more dialogue | massive edit 9/10/19, moved a lot around and changed a bit]





	old-fashioned goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> The idea: Aldo is a closeted sadist. 
> 
> Some seven (maybe eight? maybe nine, now?) months ago, I had this idea, and then I started the first draft of it. I cleaned up said draft, and then I sat on it for the next seven months... and it was only just now that I noticed this has been finished this entire time.  
> ((((Is my own beta reader seven months later, aghast with horror I conceived this))))
> 
> I was this close to not uploading this. _Thiiiiiis close._ Really, I'm about to close this tab and delete the file off my computer.
> 
> I tried a new style of writing for this one, and while it's very airy I wanted to experiment and I got to and that's what really matters here I think. I tried to be vague with the details. Let me know if it worked out well, it will help me improve U_U.  
> People really liked my first fic about this pairing as well and for all the nice things you all had to say I felt indebted to return with something bigger, more laborious with my love. The result does not seem like it much but well, if you like this, then my work is successfully done... I'll stop pestering you now, read on my love. If you want. Completely up to you. Take your time.

He pulls his back into a tight arch as he stands, looking down at his handiwork and bowing his lips.

If he had a century to do so, he’d be hard pressed to top this one. Each line is perfectly symmetrical, each feather masterly carved and equally deep. The word ‘opus’ feels appropriate; he’s heard it before, and judging by the look on Utivich’s face he’s not alone in that opinion.

It’s beyond compare.

At this point now, their little maverick has simply outdone himself in screaming his voice hoarse and tearing the soft soil and earth around him to shreds. It was experimental; uncuff him, see if he’d try anything, but he was surprisingly pliant as Aldo rutted into his forehead as if he was nothing but the gamiest slice of turkey at Thanksgiving dinner, reserved for his knife only. It’s a very, very sadistic thought- he’s got a lot of those- but he has half a mind to think Hans might have liked it.

Slick red rises from the cuts, slick red adorns the blade of his knife, slick red runs everywhere it can flow. Hans’ eyes, his neck, all breast-up of his uniform, the little of it that gets into his mouth that he ends up choking on- Utivich is kindhearted enough to prop his head up on his knee to avoid a certain circumstance, they _do_ need him alive and _‘well, uh, see, we had ‘m, but he choked out on his own blood’_ is an unflattering picture to paint for the Brass.

So Hans sits, hysterically grabbing at anything he can, form curled into a tight rictus as he wrings his head into Utivich’s lap shouting expletives in German. When he’s not doing this, he’s coughing viscerally and making sounds that truly defy description. It’s all primal, his expression combined with desperate convulsions. Man reduced to his most feral state.

Aldo isn’t straddling him anymore, rather tracing them both in a curt circle — yet Hans does just about everything but try to stand or defend himself. He blinks a million times a second, dry and flaking blood flying off of his eyelashes as he writhes around indiscriminately, reaching for just about anything tangible and digging his fingers into it. Utivich doesn’t take pain well, never has, but Aldo’s impressed by his lack of reaction when those fingers claw deep into his thighs, his arms, his chest, anything.

He’s even benign enough to offer some help when Hans tries to prop himself upright, but it’s all cut short by the _perfectly_ terrible way he screams when his hair decides to introduce itself to the lesion. Back to the ground he goes.

Aldo leans against a close-by tree, drying his knife off with a dirty rag. This could go on for hours, and it might. They’ve got time.

“You alright?”

“He has really long fingernails,” Utivich says, but his voice is tempered more by sarcasm than pain.

“And how about yourself, Colonel? Y’alright?”

Hans responds with what Aldo can only assume to be something unfathomably rude- if his gesticulations, the wringing motions he's making, are anything to go off of.

“Could I get that in a different tongue?”

“You are a fucking _disgrace_ , you, you _animal_. You fucking _animal-”_

“Thank you kindly, but that ain’t what I asked.”

“Oh, I’m fine! Fine! Just _well,_ thanks! I’ve never felt any better-” His voice shatters halfway through, a high-pitched cry in its' stead as Utivich flicks his forehead. One time, hard, and Hans is left with the billowing cortisol of the unknowingly castrated.

Aldo gives him a thumbs-up.

Broken and roots-only as it is, Aldo the erudite, the spectator in this shifting of cards, admires the sincerity that was not present but ten minutes ago; so that’s how his voice sounds, the _real_ one. Particular pronunciation of certain words and all- not well, _vell._ This is in no ways unanticipated, but it was a side-something that did foster intrigue from the start: his voice always seemed to be buried underneath an iron-clad layer of... uncanny clarity. First-language sounding English. Someone from Ostmark would have no business lacking an accent thicker than oatmeal- in the theater Enzo believed himself to have run into another spy.

“Got a question for ya that I didn't get to ask before...” Picking at something in his teeth, he squints at the cadaver to his right and the lopsided mass of brain exposed from his shelved temple; his Private did a fine job, save the occasional twitches that run through Hermann's shoulder. “If it's not a none-of-my-business deal, where'd'ya learn English?”

“What does that- what does that have to do with-? How is that, that relevant?”

Oh, it’s so soft now. Unprojected. Everything mumbled.

“You’re right, it’s not. Just happens that I'm the curious type, fairly certain you know how that goes.”

Hans laughs, breezily- or wheezes like he's laughing. “I do. But if you ask- I'm sure that if you were to ask the man in the gallows what type of necktie he prefers-” Utivich snorts and covers his mouth fast, muttering _'sorry, sorry sir'_ in Aldo's direction— “-he'd think you were making a sort of... mockery of his situation, no?”

“Colonel, are you evading a direct question?”

“I’m- I am providing, an _illustration..._ So that-”

“Private Utivich, kindly remind the Colonel what happens when he evades a direct question.”

Flick, and the finger stays longer than is necessary. Hans wails. “Self-taught! Self! Taught!”

With business returning to the frontlines of priority Aldo pushes himself to stand, sheathing his knife. As this transaction occurs, the blade makes a vexatious grinding sound. He crosses over - he swears Hans flinches with every individual step, digging his hands and face deeper into Utivich’s lap like he’s scared, rolling himself a deer's bed. By the time Aldo is next to him and sliding a foot under his chest to kick him over onto his back he is akin to a leaf during Autumn.

When his arms splay out with the fall, Aldo crushes the hand nearest to him under his boot, reveling in the long-inhale gasp he gets from it. That air doesn’t come back out.

“Keep your hands to yourself. Blood, too. Now look what'cha did to his pants. 'That fair play to you?”

“Tell me, why can't you keep- you keep— you keep your fucking knife to yourself? My question to you.”

“What?” He scrapes his foot to the left harshly, and one finger bends the wrong way. Hans’ mouth falls open, but he fails to make a sound. Nothing at all; glazed eyes and a blank, blank stare through graying eyes. “Did I just hear somethin?”

Reaching out a hand downward, Aldo pulls Utivich up. The back of Hans’ head hits the ground with a meaty, satisfying _smack_ that leaves him with harshly grit teeth and eyes squeezed shut as he turns to block out the sun, cradling the unfortunate finger.

“Are we done here, sir?”

“Mm. Dunno yet.”

“...’Cause, you know. I don’t- I don’t know how we’re getting him to the truck like that, I...”

“'Take his left ankle, I’ll take his right?”

Freshly awakened, Hans protests this with a quite audible _‘mmm-mmm’_ sound coming from closed lips, shaking his head until it stings to do so.

“Might work, I guess. Do you think he weighs a lot?”

The sound gets louder, more desperate.

“Coat's playing tricks on you, not one bit.” A deliberate pause until Aldo gives his Private a sturdy look he reserves for very few: “Or...”

To which Utivich responds with a kittenish grin as he now understands the game they're playing: “Or?”

 _“Or_ I could pull the truck up right there n’ we could tie him to the back of it. 'Keep your arms good for something more important.”

This gets an actual _‘no’,_ followed by a series of quieter repeats.

“You mean strap him to the back? Or, uh, leaving him on the ground and stringing him up?”

Hans appears very distressed. Aldo cannot, for the life of him, piece together why. “This is fucking _inhuman._ This, this is fucking- you’re b-both–”

“Shut up.” As casually as anything Aldo stomps on his chest and leaves it there, a dry heave comes from below. “Stringing him up... We do got cord, don’t we? Strong type?”

“Lots of it last time I checked, yeah.”

“How’s his neck sound?”

Hans is entirely incoherent at this point. Making the swastika must have fucked with him cerebrally- his uttering has devolved to either German or pure gibberish blended with whining.

“Okay, well... You go too fast and his head’s off, though.”

“Wrap his whole chest and arms up instead then, how bout? You ever heard of baby-binding?”

“What the _fuck_ is that?” Hans very rudely interrupts. Aldo justly punishes him for his unruliness with a second stomp and Utivich struggles to keep his giggling at bay.

“If we drive with him like that, though, all the skin on his face is gonna, you know, get all... scratched off?”

Hans wails miserably with everything he has left in him.

“Sounds good, but that ain’t very presentable. You think that'll be presentable, Utivich? I'm not sure that'll be presentable.”

“Sure wouldn’t, sir.”

Aldo puts his hands on his hips, looking up. Sampling the air. With the handful of hours remaining until the light is bricked away by the wall of night, the state of their sleeping accommodations— alias, concrete benches in the back of a dingy transport vehicle that carries a strong odor of urine— and the tasteless rations someone intentionally forgot in the glove compartment makes getting across the border the highest priority. Utivich is having a swell time, the loose swing of his arms says so, but his neck is beginning to loll in that way it does when he's tired. That's a personal responsibility for his last man, see he's met with the correct succor.

If there's such a thing as an impersonal responsibility, a dark mirror to the state of things, what it describes naturally excludes Utivich who is mostly a pacifist anyhow. He shifts his weight to the other foot, feels Utivich's head on his shoulder and keeps his eyes firmly glued at the figure in the underbrush.

The two desires - one to leave Hans as he is to have enough time to secure his Private a warm tent by sundown, and one to liquidate any form of dignity Hans has left - wrestle for priority within Aldo’s core, and they make quite a mess in there.

“Private.”

“Yeah?”

He makes direct eye contact with the squirming composition of cells on the forest floor he calls Hans Landa. “Would’ja do me a favor real quick?”

“Sure, anything. What?”

“Wait in the, uh. The truck for a minute.”

He blinks in surprise.

“Just gonna talk. I’ll have him over there by myself, no problem. Don’t fall asleep or nothing, I ain't giving you permission to do that.”

“Are you sure-?” In comes the subalternity- Utivich's eyes flit between both men as his smile begins to fade; “I can just- I can help, you know, what if it's not just the coat and he's actually-?”

The over-complaisant disposition was always at the ground of his nature. As much as Aldo likes it, he doesn't, and _no_ is such a hard conclusion to reach. It's like scolding a puppy. “'Vich.”

“...You're... sure?”

“You just keep that cord on you. One minute, I promise. Don’t come out ‘less I call you.”

It’s clear by the look on his face he wants to object further, but doesn’t. Aldo’s thankful talking back has never been his strong suit. As Utivich makes himself scarce, Hans works himself into a fit of hyperventilation upon noticing his departure.

“Wait- no, wait. Wait. No no no no- Utivich? _Utivich?_ Where is he- Utivich? Where is he, he going?”

“Gettin some cord, Landa.”

Aldo is slow in how he stoops down, grabbing both sides of Hans’ lapels and pulling him upright. He’s not so brutish as to drag him up fast; he respects many things and pain is but one of them. The more ulterior of the motives is that the more gradually he does it, the slower the burn. The more intense the panic, the deeper the dread.

 _“Utivich?”_ Hans calls, and although the former does look back once, he hurries himself away as to not let his good will accidentally seep in. It’s ineffectual, but Hans continues to string a line of pleas in that direction until a hand clamps around his mouth hard and turns his face.

“Didn't say you could look over there.”

 _Oh,_ gently caters the last part of Hans' brain that can still process oxygen and rationalize. Somehow Aldo’s drawl is much more threatening and less comical when it’s spoken low and at length, every word punctuated by a pause.

“You, look, at, me. Do I make myself clear?”

A hurried, fearful glance up and down.

Displeased once more, Aldo justly punishes him for his unruliness - a void of response to a question as clear as crystal - by jamming his knife’s sheath against his hip, an action which leaves him gasping an expletive. A far more apt punishment than a mere flick to the forehead, swastika or no swastika; might’ve also cracked his pelvic bone, but it’s not like he won’t be able to get it checked out with all those benefits and frills he’s got now. A long groan, a forced ‘yes’.

Weight doesn’t translate well between its physical reality and its visual reality, which is to say he looks far heavier than he actually is. Hans doesn’t weigh much more than Aldo’s little sister, to both of their apparent surprise; he’s used to swinging her around and he’s able to elevate him in the exact same way without trouble. Up he goes, feather light regardless of the leather, a pile of morning laundry waiting for order on Saturday before the sun has peeled out from the trees.

Trees, trees. Trees are everywhere. There's plenty of them, and he scouts for one wide enough with Hans thrown over his right shoulder.

Sprouting with full volume out of the ground, birch-looking by color and firm, Aldo whistles as he shoves his back against it and holds him tight there with his legs in place, nailed down against the bark. Demoralization to stave off escape attempts, maintenance of fear... Hans’ breath remains quickened, a coil before the spring, but he's capable of just enough eye contact when Aldo manually turns his face again. Blood makes his chin feel like chalk.

“What’d I tell you to do? Huh?”

 _'A fantastic question,'_ the buried glib in his eyes seems to want to say. It does not come out, but he attempts it: “I- you know, I feel as if-”

_“What’d I tell you?”_

He squirms as his type are liable to do. Each word is said in the same hectic breath: “I know what you told me to do and I apologize that it slipped from me.”

“Is that so? Why am I having such a hard time believing that, huh? Sorry comin’ from you is some kind of rich, you know that?”

“How- what do you want me to-?”

“I want you tell the truth for one time in your whole goddamn life is what I want you to do.”

Another flash of the _glib_ crosses his face as though they're brooding over chianti and not negotiating his life. “You don't think your- yourself at all... biased to think that I couldn't? Hm? No?”

Rude, inappropriate, impolite. Aldo repositions himself a second time, tightens the hand that’s holding Hans to the tree by his neck. “Know what, Colonel? The circumstances prove it necessary, so... I’m gon’ make you...”

—Hans tries to say something and is cut off, but not by speech. The pressure forcing him up against the trunk worsens and Aldo’s leg is abruptly forked deep between his, tearing the air right out of his lungs and leaving him coughing, wheezing, spitting involuntarily. Pressure is applied to the wrong places.—

"...A little deal.”

Utivich, some paces away, looks up from his hands when he hears a desolate scream of terror.

And following that outburst Hans’ entire expression crumples and he seems to shift to an entirely new focus, any elements of _fight_ now draining from his core as his internal pendulum takes a hard swing towards _flight._ Thus, he goes: he makes one attempt to wring himself loose by swinging his body to the left- which fails and results in another hard crack to the hip. His voice falters hard, cracking through blood and tears and snot and spit bubbles.

 _“Nnnnno._ No deal. No more deals. No, _no_ no, no more. No. I don't-”

“Why not?”

“Can we-? Can you... could you... Why are you? God, we could just... not...”

“Yeah, we could. But we won’t. More important stuff to get around to now, like this thing bout you not wanting a deal or something? And I'm confused, Colonel. Thought you liked them.”

“I was– I did, _did,_ but someone doesn’t keep his- his ends. Ends? Ends.”

Confusion has set in, phrasing is fractured, Hans makes the most complicated face as he hears his own words playing back to himself. There _are_ increments of pity; Aldo isn’t entirely inhumane, he swears that right-hand-up: he softens his grasp, now on Hans’ face, and turns it so he can spit. He’s holding him up so that the blood won’t slick him off the tree. Was that kind of sustenance available he would patch a few things up with bandages, but a safe few only, only enough to keep the point carried. He’s struck the center between just and brutal. It’s fair, he’s fair.

“Uh-huh. Now if you don't mind me talkin technical, 'thing there is that you didn’t really make that deal with _me._ Sure I said this and sure I said that, but all in all, you made it with my superior. I didn’t put my vow on anything, so those weren’t my ends to keep. You shoulda specified you wanted my continued involvement if you did.”

Hans swallows so hard Aldo has half a mind to think he was trying to eat his own tongue. “Do I have...”

“Can't hear ya.”

“Do I have... options... here.”

“’Kind of options you hoping to have?”

“Um.” His hand shakes when it moves upward to pull at the bridge of his nose, flakes of dried blood falling off it. He sniffs- once, twice, and when he slips he's pulled back up by his shoulders which now feel so much narrower. He's thin up close, the kind of person Aldo's mother would question the dietary habits of. Fence post in stately getup, the top slab of veal in the butcher's reject bucket. The percentage of gray hairs is far more than it seems from afar, blond strands are interspersed, miniature falsehoods.

“'Give you time to think about that.”

“Oh. That’s rather— pragmatic, of you. Very.”

“Need it, right? Head must hurt like a real bitch right now, don't it? How's it feeling?”

“How you intend it to.” Curved like a question, which is interesting. His head lolls, with a hand flattened square over his forehead Aldo pushes it back upright. There's no sounds left to make.

“Now you're gettin it.” Aldo leans in for no reason aside from to emphasize their height difference. It works. “So, see, Colonel- just one more little addition to all that. You’re complaining bout _ends,_ so I trust that you can keep yours. This is strictly confidential ‘tween you and me, so I expect you to not bring this up with my Private. He catches even a little wind and I’m gutting you from the back. Got it?”

Hans’ eyes are closed now and he’s resorted to breathing through his mouth. Aldo interprets the silence as a hesitant affirmation.

“Only gonna use this if you make me,” Aldo begins, patting his sheath twice with an unabashedly pitiless smile. “To get to the meat of it, I don’t feel like you _learned_ anything just now. And while that could be just speculation, I tend to be right in my impressions. I made a specific point of going real slow back there so you’d get the _point_ of the gesture, but uh. I know for a fact you’re just gonna bitch and moan your way through some hospital doors when we hand you over, get doped up, scrape the scar off and be on with yourself. And ain’t that what you had planned?”

A brilliant speech, really, for the improbable congress of one captiv(at)e(d) listener. Hans, as he does in contexts where there's either something funny on the premises or he has no other idea of what to possibly do, starts cackling in agreement. “No, you... Me, doped up? No, no. Tell me that isn't what you really think. Never. Heavens, no. Imagine what my mother would say, my colleagues, the... local constituents... Please. You'll be able to sleep peacefully at night with the knowing that I'd, I would, I'll never attempt such... this... political foolishness ever again."

“Political foolishness. 'That what it is, huh?”

“I couldn't. Not even if I wanted to. In twenty years my forehead will now constitute as, as a symbol of...” his voice trails off, cuing Aldo:

“A failed empire? Hatred? 'Bunch of folk trying to drive down a road full of potholes and shooting each other when they kept goin down?”

“Oh. Well put.”

Aldo flicks a medal and Hans feels it in his forehead, wincing. “You thought about those _options,_ yet? Whatever the fuck that even means, but. How you're gonna weasel your way out of this? 'Made me curious again.”

“You keep asking me this question. You don't be... believe anything that I say. It comes across to me as trust issues. Hmm? Do you have those? I see them.”

“Only round snot-nosed cocksuckin’ Nazi fucks like you, yeah. Met a ton, and you’re the worst of em all.”

An opinion? A hatchet-job evaluation? How rough, how bristling. Well, compliment in some other dimension. There is a passing moment wherein Hans lacks enough coherent thought to respond and nods without word, eyes forward and starting to lose their glaze. They share a look and several years of silence; the surrounds pick up their dialogue for them. Leaves mellow above, birds sing with a pleasant disconnect from the present tense, there’s the faint hum of the engine. Aldo looks up, elsewhere. Utivich must be keeping himself warm, might even be having a cat nap. He likes those.

The universe clicks back into motion. Hans is laughing too much about nothing. “What do you... personally get out of this?”

“Civic duty completed to the fullest extent.”

“Civic duty?”

“One a’ them things somebody’s got to do for the greater good. Quit drooling on me.”

Hans’ opting to then apologize upon noticing that is odd, but not unwanted and for his clemency Aldo attempts to brush the rogue strands of hair out of his face. There’s still an interconnected web of the ones that won’t budge, each matted under blood, but the progress is evident. The corners of his mouth twitch in a grimace, then a wince, then something else.

“Being empathetic isn’t- part of your threading, is it?”

“’Cause you were the posterchild of empathy when you were rounding up them Jews, huh?”

His heart starts to drum again, the lungfulls of air he takes constrain and sound more and more like whistles. “You really think... I had... an option.”

“Smartass like you could’ve found your way out of there.”

“I, I cer- well, yes. I certainly could have. If I wanted to have a mark on my neck like yours.”

Hans doesn't flinch this time, though his boots shift in the leaves and dead grass below when a thumb presses into his windpipe again– but Aldo liked that one. So _bold._ He indicates this with a smile, with a singsong voice despite admonishing words: “You got some grit to talk like that. Think I won't kill you right now? You think I couldn't do it with this one hand?”

“But you won’t.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Wh- why would you, when– you could keep- doing this? Fun, isn’t it?”

“Tons.”

The pressure increases steadily, thumb pressing in sharper - experimentally - as Aldo ballasts him steady, and Hans is left with a certainty that his brain has finally caught fire. He agonizes trying to pull himself out, away, towards Utivich's foreign aid; sometimes grabbing, sometimes punching- with no real force. In the way of all things stands Aldo, impossibly rugged and dense, less flesh and more steel from his place in things. Incorruptible and infallible.

“I did figure that you would- like having fun with men, don’t you, Lieutenant? He seemed quite fond, just- just now-”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think- I think you- God, _stop.”_

“No, wait, get on with it. You were sayin something. What’s it mean, Colonel?”

“Stop. Stop. Stop.”

“I'm doing exactly what you said, what's the matter?”

Hans is effortlessly slipping into a oxygen-devoid stupor. He can’t do much for himself in the way of breathing; his face is either met with Aldo’s stiff shoulder or his chest and there’s not much else to do but slacken his limbs and pray for mercy. Where there is air, it’s granted with blood that makes him see stars. He feels drunk.

So drunk, he almost doesn’t feel it. A small squeeze between hands, nothing more. The enormous physical documentation that the last residuals of Hans’ mind can record from that, muscles of a wiry hand, those wide-set fingers, pressing down into... something. A gesture that is supposed to mean something. To show him something. To pull something somewhere inside of his head out and cast a million spotlights upon it. Aldo is holding his hand and he squeezed it gently to make a point- one undefined, one elsewhere, one elusive and... representative, of...

The hand is then gone and Hans whines at the remembrance that his finger is indeed broken. In absence of the tenderness, his chest returns to its frantic pace of heaving.

Just when his face is beginning to blue the thumb is also pulled away, but the flinch Aldo has sought is instead granted when he runs it down the ridges of his jugular all slow.

Now he's smiling. A real one, not a faked spur-of-the-moment nor a clean-conscience-Italian smile; simply bathing in the absolutism.

He can see the sky’s color warming in the distance, the standard muted colors of sunset; the low sun peeking out of the overcast and turning it from dripping honey to a low almost reddish color. Aldo can see the hour on his watch, but the long hand is beneath red- a long strip of sunlight is baking certain parts of Hans' face orange, he can physically feel him swallow when the knife is brandished again and he takes immense joy in watching his pupils dilate again, watching his eyes cloud over.

It comes out instantaneously when Hans disgorges the first apology of many, the words slurring as they forced themselves out before his mind could even approach the topic of speaking.

“See, there just ain’t... a whole lotta weight to it when your type say they’re sorry.” Aldo digs the tip of his blade into a part of the tree much too close to Hans’ ear, pulling it downward and pretending to sharpen it. Holding it aloft, turning it over, spectating on how it catches the light, watching the tremors settle over his forced composure. “Might as well clarify. Do you got any idea how many times... I’ve heard that from Nazis? And they don’t say it cause they’re sorry, either. No aim for forgiveness or nothing. They just say it to get out of the situation. Course, I always ask, _‘sorry for what?’_ and suddenly they don’t got more to say. Real odd. What’s the word even mean to you?”

"I'm very sure that..." The knife starts moving in elaborate patterns when its' holder notices the way his eyes follow it around; "You wouldn't like it if I lumped you in with every other- other Lieutenant from- every other American Lieutenant, would you- I- oh, God. Wait. Wait, I-"

"Nah. This is different," Aldo hums indifferently as he gets about cutting those stupid goddamn medals off his coat one by one and chucking them as far as he can throw. Three times over the course of this Hans opens his mouth to interject as a particularly valuable medal is carved out, to which the blade finds itself head-end at his jugular. Shuts him up good, Aldo finds. And as if it’ll make him change his mind, have him walking over to whichever pile of mud _Badge of Gallantry and Field Excellence #97481_ landed in and giving it back, Hans absently mumbles out the stories of how he got his favorites when they’re cut, weeping tearlessly as there’s no more to shed. He inhales so strongly and so abruptly each time that it must be tearing his throat from the inside, at least making it sore.

 _"How is it different?"_ This is practically a yell, it just lacks the volume.

“Come on, Colonel. You're grown. What’re the croc tears for, huh?”

“I don’t assume you- you did this to your captives when your- your- when your subalterns were within earshot, did you? Tormented people? Humiliated-?”

“Never so much as a thought.”

“So- I’d— well, then. _Well, then,_ ”— he exclaims; the blade presses too deep for a moment, lingers over his heart and digs just enough to send him nigh into shock— "....Is it because I-"— the sharp side runs lightly over his throat, Aldo is chuckling, Hans sputters over himself— "BecauseI'mthelastone? Stopstopstopstop."

Because Aldo is just, the medal that reduces him back to sobs upon seeing its' dismissal is held up so that Hans can say farewell, kiss it goodbye, relive the ceremony. It soars unlike all others. "If you wanna look at it that way."

"...So you..."

"Told you, you gotta speak up."

"You waited."

"Did I?"

"All of this time to- for the opportunity to really torture a man."

"Who said you were a man?"

That would have been funny in another time, in another space. The muscles in Hans' face are too overwrought to smile. He too has become a spectator, watching them all go. "You... did."

More _glib._ Glib that provokes thought, singularly enough, watching him distinguish himself from the very few others. Three medals left to go, the breast of his uniform is now but a wide crater. "You wanna feel special, huh?"

The dry, musty scent of metallic blood, so strong it's tasted, wafts between them and leaves noisome afterimages- Hans is toying, mirroring his head movements. All of him blends into one homogeneous black as the mesa of night overtakes, though his expressions become no less mocking; the free hand moves back up to his throat, he grabs its' wrist.

"Did you really?"

"What're you getting at, Colonel?" And Hans laughs. "Trying to get me to say something, huh?"

"You're bizarre-" the pert touch to his voice is louder than anything else as he arches his chest forward, whispering in the way of the mutineer—

"Y'came this far, don't you think for a second that I didn't notice-"

"You've done a terrible thing where I- cannot tell whether I'm being tortured or teased, you... Are you teasing me? You awful human being. You... you dog."

"...Distracting me,"  Aldo mutters, the sentence noticeably unfinished.

"Be truthful, Mr. The Apache. What part... is this of your grand little lesson? Or are you making it up as you go along?"

That says it plainly. "You wanna see?"

Heedless of the objective fact that he is blood-matte and well near his bodily limit of pain, his expression still molds into the trademark expression of tangling hard with the jagged edges of a new concept. _A rhetorical question?_ , his eyebrows say, peeking out from Aldo’s shoulder. He’s shifting his weight between both feet, coat riding up because of Aldo’s arms that protrude beneath them; the blinking fireflies beneath the guise of night, the sultry and humid air. The loss of blood, the hand around his throat that is beginning to recede, the rippling of the ground, the buckling of his knees.

Aldo’s voice is painfully sober, a baleful anchor. He shushes him. So becalmed is the man before Hans when he’s making an uncannily gentle incision through the front of his coat, taking out buttons as he goes down. It is very precise and he never penetrates skin.

“Oh, you’re ambidextrous,” Hans mispronounces, his voice far away.

Cutting with his left hand, his right is holding his again. Stroking the finger again. He nods, and they both become spectators for the closing event.

Their eyes meet, so close, too close. Blood blood blood blood blood. “I don’t like this color on you much. Antiquated."

When Aldo is wordlessly half-tearing, half-cutting him out of his coat, Hans’ face is dark with redness the color of wine and hair is shimmering into his eyes. There is a moment of mutual comprehension before Hans’ voice turns into the panicked staccato it should be, ripe with audible uncertainty- a whimper, a groan that flies south. Though he stays level, Aldo likes the sound more than he knows he should- he likes the face, the look on the face, having responsibility for that look.

The leather is gone, and the transition from it to the uniform beneath is practically liquid. He isn’t particularly artful in how he persists with the process. It fits too well, meaning it must have been a custom make; all the more reason to take it away from him. Absolve him of the association.

Hans’ lungs are burning, they cut off what he tries to then say. They’re constricting too forcefully under the weight being forced upon them and the panic and the distress and suddenly chain-smoking for the last twenty something years is a strong contender for the worst decision he’s ever made, high up there with walking down the stairs in the Kino. When he chokes and blood comes out of his mouth he’s not sure if it’s from inside or his forehead.

"You're not keeping still, Colonel. Don't make me cut you."

“I can’t breathe.”

“Aaaaaalmost done. Hold tight.”

Hans repeats himself, voice shriller than the first time, sucking his stomach in.

“Hold on, lemme...”

“Aldo, I can’t _fuck_ ing breathe-”

Given the access and unable to will himself not to, Aldo drags his palm down Hans’ chest, streaks red across him. Some leftover buttons come undone in the process; his chest is an even color with the exception of several blotchy birthmarks and the occasional mole. Lesson seen and appreciated, knife sheathed.

He looks fit to pass out when Aldo’s job is complete, standing there shivering with blood still tracing down his form. Shivering, sweating.

One large breath of cold air that freezes his lungs solid through. When he blacks out momentarily and slinks forward, he falls into the arms before him. Something beyond both of them leads to an embrace, something stranger still that makes Aldo not mind the blood now battering his collarbone and gluing his button to his skin. This suit is fucked forever. It’s a shame, it was nice. He would’ve worn it again.

He backs up an inch or two and with minimal effort dethreads Hans’ arms from his back, then pushing him off to lean against the tree again. He does so with slacking arms, the blood by now too dry to slide him down and there’s no protests heard when Aldo circles around for a comprehensive look. When he is back at his front, he pulls his wrists forward to hold them. The skin there is elegant and softly tanned.

“Sufferin’ Saint Sebastian.”

When the words penetrate the mist, Hans makes another one of those sounds. A breathy little thing that doesn’t leave the description realm of hiccup. It’s strange, coming from a grown man.

The wit hasn’t yet retired, he takes his time to breathe and think his words through. Through red and bitten lips, Hans is able to murmur still; “You wouldn’t give me... to your superiors-” he swallows deeply- “like this?”

“'Part of the lesson, ain't it? You really overestimate how much of a fuck they give.” Aldo leans in- “After all, who says I did this?”

—His voice levels out for that statement, doesn't waver as much as he feels like it does saying it. When he hears it, it's stable. Something distant that sits behind his eyes, forlorn and elsewhere, so very detached from the person he knows himself as asserts concurrently that it _was_ him that did this, though this is... an obvious thing. It's said loudly in his mind, like a reminder. It does not admonish. It congratulates.

He's filled with some terror for a moment and puts it aside for later introspection. _It's a Nazi,_ the other side of his mind runs to say.

“So you want to just, just put all of this on your private? Noble.”

“You gotta stop putting words in my mouth, it’s unbecoming and it ain’t helping you any. Hell no I’m not. They know his records and they know his mama.”

“So I did this to myself?"

But he wonders if he'd be reacting differently if it was _not_ a Nazi, if it was... say, since he's right over there, Utivich. He doesn't want the visual, but in spite of his greatest mental efforts it's formed anyway, hard rock sprouting out of magma, screaming down the volcano's side; he looks at it in his mind, contrasts the reality with the thought. One has civic duty points, the other does not. One interests him more than the other, but in saying _more_ than the other, it is suggested they both interest him to some degree.

And they do.

“Hell, I've seen worse. Bet you have too. Let's say you felt real bad and went for direct penance."

Hans is certain he’s not on planet Earth any longer when they both start laughing together. His laugh quickly devolves into more visceral coughing and there’s a steadying hand on his shoulder to keep him docked... which he reaches up to touch the back of.

"But that isn't true. You thought this was necessary.” The hand doesn’t go anywhere, even ends up doing the streak again and he follows it down. “...Which feels... contradiction. Contradictory, ahem. Is it a lesson or a duty? I can't tell.”

"Maybe if you'd let me focus on what I was trying to do."

He's chuckling again and thus Hans knows there's nothing behind those words, but he asks anyway.

"What do you think?"

"Well, I'm more fun to you alive than- then dead-" Aldo's palm is heavy, hot, and leaves a trail of burnt ground each time it passes over his torso. "And you want me... vulnerable, don't you? So you can-"

Aldo doesn’t respond to this. He feels a jolt around his loins, leaves it alone. Hand back on his shoulder, pulled down a second time and then a third as though he’s adjusting to doing it, seeing how he likes it.

Hans is smashed into by a sudden tidal wave of calm that leaves him more confused than any other feeling, so expectant for the worst that without it he’s left stammering in confusion. He still can’t quite make out the finer details of the black mass before him, omnipresent and everything- but it breathes, it looks at him, it looks down at him, and it’s just as blood-battered as he is. The sky is a strata of blues that rise darker, the forest is a sea of fence posts all twenty feet tall.

“Yeah?”

It takes time. He genuinely seems to be pondering a response, sniveling and wiping his face with trembling hands over and over again whilst really doing little more than making it all worse. An unsteady, stuttered voice again: "See... see me weak, perh- weak, perhaps?”

Another jolt, one considerably less belated. He leaves it alone. "Isn't that something," Aldo says cooly, though his voice is lined with something intense. It hitches midword, once. "You, the highest n' mightiest. Weak."

He doesn't think Hans knows or has noticed, and he better not have, but the tightly wound ball that is his composure is starting to weaken in its' threadwork. Long reins of it come undone in twos, in threes. The further he assesses the situation, the more present he is in it, the further it unravels. Hans has a look on his face that makes him keep pressing his thumb down, makes him. Makes him do it without guile. The thoughts wander and the mind is inclining towards everything. He can't curse out the sun for doing what it's always done, but he wishes it hadn't set so soon. He can't see what he's done as much anymore, Hans' face is a muted blue and so is the rest of him. Red gradients into black.

"A question," Hans says, his voice so close to it's former, almost clear again. "We've alre- we've already discussed that you're... you do derive some sort of. Some sort of, some- what is this to you?"

“You’re coverin yourself with your own spit, knock it off. Gimme.” Aldo grabs for a wrist, but the other does not stop.

"What is this to you? What is it?"

"Think I told you already. A civic duty. Now quit touching your damn face."

“I’m sorry.”

“Thought I told you to stop sayin that, too.”

“Yes.” Hans says this like it’s the last thought at the very end of a series of postscripts. “When you said- you were right when you said... that...”

“You gotta speak up for me. Right here and I can't hear you."

“We don’t- that- that— nobody fucking apologizes anymore. Apologies are air, aren’t they? Just- just air."

He steps in, again. He flattens him against the tree, again, and Hans wheezes another swear that fades into the wind he breathes it to. Air, air, air. Air indeed. Like a cabin door opened in deep space, every suggestion of _air_ drains from his lungs. Enter the stupor. When he begins to sink there is nothing left in his legs to keep him upright and not enough of Aldo ever to pin his body up.

But it as though this time the gesture of bowling him over and pressing him against the tree is more symbolic than it was in the first iteration, less a show of brutish rage and nor of dominance; now it is something more controlling yet still otherworldly enough to be impossible to grasp. He's not pressing with his chest, the force comes from lower. His waist, notably. Keeps him in place, and Hans looks down once. Only once.

Aldo exhales against his ear, almost a laugh, one too heavy and too warm.

The longer they stay like this, isolated from time and the rest of everything, Hans appears asleep more and more- eyes lidding with something in them that looks almost serene. Not too long later he’s smiling an absent, small grin- surely, delirium.

Probably. He looks up, not at Aldo’s eyes as much as his chin. He looks down once more, confirming something to himself. “...Waited.”

“If it makes you feel better, sure."

“I didn’t want to say anything. I, I...”

Those words in that order are too encouraging. Aldo swallows audibly- there is another jolt they both feel.

Like they fear existing too loud will alert Utivich, they whisper an odd, off-balanced dialogue that skirts the subject in focus. Hans talks his broken, slaloming English and when Aldo’s palm is crossing the landscape of his chest and stomach again, he laughs an uncomfortable laugh without breath and tries to shrug away one final time although he knows it to be futile. When the palm goes lower than usual, he’s not surprised, but he does yelp and shy into himself.

“I'm not sure I can-” Hans begins, quietly, softly, hands on Aldo’s forearms arms in interest of whatever safety can be salvaged from this wreckage.

“Y'are."

And he is, somewhat, against all possible odds. He’s being chafed, that more-familiar-than-he’d-admit sensation of his sex fighting the restraint of his pants is very present, horrifyingly real. Too real to exist, nearly, and Aldo has this very specific hand motion that makes it twitch every single time. But he wants to deny it, to... be elsewhere, somewhere none of this is taking place. None. None. None of this.

There is another mental congratulation, one that suggests ripe winnings and victory. There isn't much left to bother with in terms of fabric but Aldo still removes his belt, slowly, pointedly— all that remains is pushed out of the way. A hard grab that makes Hans sees stars, a jerk made with a bloodstained hand. Stomach diving and conscience foggy, smeared into grays and browns that are impossible to sift anything from, he feels his legs buckle at last. Aldo holds him upright, but not very faithfully. He sways to a side, Aldo takes the advantage to flip him around.

And so he feels that blade's end prodding at the back of his bare thighs, running up and down in pattern. Skin is not breached, the very tip is slightly dulled and almost feels smooth as it traces the contours, traces the contours. Aldo hums contentedly, mumbles something, voice wavering. The shift from this motion to cutting off his briefs is so fast Hans is eight years behind it, not processing it until it's long done.

Hans is mostly silent, feeling the sting of what parallels raw electricity as a palm is glided slowly down the expanse of his back. When he arches his back into it, it is impulse, his body's work.

His arms are pulled back, held by the wrists. Once more, the waist presses inward. A rumbling sigh comes from behind, from above. "You fit real good."

The telltale sound of a belt unclasping punctuates this.

Time blurs in the dark. He lets out a staggered gasp when he’s grind into hard with reckless abandon. In substitute for lubricant, Aldo has a balm that’s so counteractive it would have been better to not use it at all. The same agonizing experience, yet the pain is amped for one whilst the other forces in, forces out. Being just and fair as he is, Aldo gives him time to adjust, though he doesn't really; Hans is the thought and also the afterthought, the whole damn _tree_ is going to get uprooted if he doesn't calm down, he knows that, he doesn't stop. He slips out several times, he wrenches his arm around Hans' chest for closer contact and doubles the speed of the hand around his length.

Hans gasps his way through an abrupt orgasm he didn’t think he could reach, grasping at the hand that's returned to the print it has left on his neck while making a long sound that ends pitched. Pain and euphoria well and seep, both are negated by its opposite. Hans becomes numb.

Aldo makes note to keep him close but doesn’t hold on to him, littering comments here and there about how fast he was. He falls quieter afterward, devoting his attention to covering his waist with bruised ruts as he finishes, leaving in his stead aching inner tissues seared by heat they cannot take. He drags deeply into skin, giving him one final tug toward his hips. A series of small aftershocks ride out.

Hans is cooed out of consciousness to whispers about his perseverance, things that sound like compliments and might be.

When he can reach the inside of Hans’ mouth, Aldo tastes slick blood.

**Author's Note:**

> (No more of these two for nowwww. It would be much appreciated if one of you could cattleprod me into finishing My Sweet Adversary? Thaaaank you.)


End file.
